Stimulus-response tests conducted on human or other animal subjects involve the presentation of stimulus events to the subject and measuring and/or recording characteristics of the stimulus and/or the subject's response. Stimulus-response tests may also involve analysis of the measured and/or recorded characteristics. Reaction-time tests represent a particular example of a stimulus-response test in which time delay between the stimulus event and the subject response is of particular interest. Reaction time tests represent a common assessment technique for evaluating human cognitive and neurobehavioural performance. Generally, reaction time tests involve: presenting a stimulus event to the subject, assessing and/or recording a time at which the stimulus event is presented, and assessing and/or recording a time at which the subject responds to the stimulus.
Stimulus-response tests (including reaction time tests) may be delivered on a wide-variety of hardware and software platforms. For example, stimulus-response tests may be administered on personal computers which include relatively common stimulus output devices (e.g. monitors, displays, speakers and/or the like) and relatively common response input devices (e.g. keyboards, computer mice, joysticks, buttons and/or the like). As another example, stimulus-response tests can be administered by dedicated hardware devices with particular stimulus output devices and corresponding response input devices.
There is a general desire to provide systems and methods for accurately analyzing the data obtained from reaction time tests.